


About This Gay Thing

by JauntyHako



Series: Les Misérables Fake Relationships [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fake Marriage, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Meeting the Parents, Planning a Wedding Only Not Only Yes, Two Shitheads in Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26910418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JauntyHako/pseuds/JauntyHako
Summary: To get his parents to stop pestering him, Bahorel claims he is engaged. Planning a wedding with his best friend is more fun than he'd thought it'd be.
Relationships: Bahorel/Feuilly (Les Misérables)
Series: Les Misérables Fake Relationships [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1962487
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19





	About This Gay Thing

Bahorel's parents were very proud of him for being a nationally ranked boxing champion. His father, especially, wouldn't shut up about his son kicking other people's sons' asses. His mother still talked about the one time Bahorel had been on TV being interviewed about being a role model for children who wanted a career in sports. His little sister had gotten several creeps off her back just by namedropping him. But, in their odd but loving way, they had a hard time wrapping their heads around the fact that a boxer could be gay.

“You've been spending too much time with these new friends of yours,” said his mother. His whole family had spontaneously dropped by his gym to congratulate him on his hard work and possibly squeeze him for any plans he might have about international competition. Families weren't completely foreign at this place, but Bahorel's family in particular had a reputation. Several of his workout buddies threw him glances asking in no uncertain, if silent, terms that he get his family out of here before his father started challenging people to fight his son. This was, right now, not on the agenda and Bahorel was almost sorry for it.  
“What kind of degree is library science anyway? I don't need a degree to shelve books.”  
While packing up, Bahorel debated the merit of trying to explain that Combeferre did a lot more than shelve books all day. It was a futile effort, but might help him change the topic. He didn't get a chance to make his point one way or the other, since his sister had gotten bored and started harrassing the other gym goers. 

“You look like a third grader. I bet you can't even do one chin-up.”  
“You'd be surprised.”  
Oh great, she'd picked Feuilly.  
“Yeah? Do one right now.”  
“Leave him alone, you little gremlin,” Bahorel said and marched over to pick his sister up by the scruff of her neck if necessary. She ducked out of his reach, and watched curiously as Feuilly finished his rep and went over to the chinup bars, doing three in quick succession just for show. After the first his sister had crossed her arms, now she pouted the pout of a teenager who'd been proven wrong but was too much of a wuss to admit it. Feuilly bowed with a flourish.  
“Oh, fuck off, tosser,” she said and wandered off to ruin somebody else's day.   
“Charming,” Feuilly said, sitting by the ring next to Bahorel to rest and drink.   
“Usually she's worse than that,” Bahorel said drily. Unfortunately the brief interlude had not shaken his parents' focus. 

“About this gay thing,” his mother picked up.   
“Jesus Christ,” Feuilly muttered behind him, too low to be heard by anyone else.   
“It's not a phase, mom, really.”  
“You were never gay when you were young,” his father said. Bahorel knew him well enough to know that his father thought he had just brought up the perfect argument. That, and they'd had this particular conversation before. A couple of times.  
“I spent half of my teenage years in locker rooms with sweaty half-naked dudes.” And the other half in the closet, Bahorel did not add. If he so much as hinted at the idea of having a less than stellar childhood his parents would be consumed by grief. He loved them too much to do that to them. Besides, it wasn't their fault. He had never really believed they would reject him because of what he was. His fear had come from inside and his anger had been directed only ever at himself.   
“TMI, dude.” His sister had returned, a brief pause on her exploration of the gym that had so far not yielded anyone interesting to bully.   
“That's normal,” his father protested. “Your mother is right, it's those friends of yours. They're putting ideas in your head, son.”  
“Every boy wants to be popular,” his mother added, still willfully unaware of the fact that he was a grown man with healthy self-confidence.  
“I'm not dating men to fit in with my friends!” As Bahorel said that a stroke of genius came down on him, imbuing him with the perfect, fool-proof, guaranteed to work way to get his parents to realise his gayness was there to stay. 

“In fact, my friends don't even know I'm getting married!”  
Stunned silence spread not only over the small circle of his immediate family but across the entire gym. People stared at him who barely knew his name. His coach stared down at his clipboard as if he expected to have gotten a note about this. Behind him Bahorel heard the suppressed gurgling of a man choking on water while trying very hard not to miss a single thing being said.   
“You're getting married?” his mother whispered, hands clutched over her heart. His father seemed to have lost all skills of self-expression. Even his sister looked shocked, looking between him and their parents. She was however, the first one to recover from the shock and resume her standard mode.  
“Who the fuck would want to marry you?”  
“Language,” his mother warned. “But really, who's the, uh, the groom to be? Why haven't we met him?”  
Ah. Shit.   
He hadn't thought that far.  
Bahorel looked around, trying to find a likely suspect, mind racing through a list of names and discarding all of them. He'd been put on the spot, if this went on a second longer they'd become suspicious, and then he'd get a lecture on lying in addition to the lecture about Homosexuality As A 21st Century Fad.   
“You have, actually.” Feuilly rose to the occasion and his feet, all charm. “I'm Feuilly, Bahorel's fiancé.”

As Bahorel's mother took Feuilly's offered hand, shaking it in a daze, he tried very hard not to look just as gobsmacked as his parents. Then he realised that this was perfect. Feuilly was perfect. He was the ultimate believable boyfriend. They were already friends, so there was no way it would be awkward pretending to be engaged for a few hours until his parents headed home. And sure, falling in love with Feuilly had been the one and only reason for Bahorel to confront his own homosexuality and fundamentally change the way he lived, saw himself, and the kinds of people with which he surrounded himself, but that didn't even have to come up.  
Finally his father's mainframe booted up again and he went right back to being the man Bahorel had grown up with. First he shook Feuilly's offered hand, gripping his entire forearm in a vice grip, then he pulled him into a crushing hug that only luck prevented from breaking ribs.  
“Well, why didn't you say! Our son, proper getting married and he doesn't even tell his parents. You look like a fine young man, son. Are you in the boxing game, too?”  
“Yes, sir,” Feuilly croaked, trying to decide between being polite and breathing. Bahorel stepped in to save his fake fiancé.  
“Let go of him, dad, before he suffocates,” Bahorel said, but couldn't physically intervene as he was now being engulfed by his mother. While his sister asked derisive questions about Feuilly's weight class, suggesting he aim for featherweight as an aspirational goal, his mother chose the kind of question he was not prepared to answer.  
“When's the wedding?”  
“Uh ...” Bahorel did not know anything about weddings. “In a month.” Nothing at all.  
“In a month! And you haven't sent out invitations yet? Please tell me you've at least booked the venue.”  
“Um, you see ...”  
His coach, trying unsuccessfully to look like he was not eavesdropping was sucked into the vortex of his mother's outrage.  
“He hasn't booked a venue, yet.”  
“Tragic,” Valjean said with a smile. He was onto them.  
But once again Feuilly came to his rescue. After preserving his own dignity and societal standing in his sister's eyes by not mentioning that the Bantamweight division existed and he was just barely in it, he came to Bahorel's side, linking their fingers so casually for a second Bahorel was convinced that even Feuilly believed they'd be getting married.   
“We were about to send the invitations this week,” he lied smoothly. “Baba and I decided that a small ceremony would fit us best. We don't want to make a big fuss, you see?”  
Knowing full well that Feuilly was in the process of saving his ass here, Bahorel nonetheless leaned into his ear and said low enough for only him to hear: “At the pet name stage, are we?”  
“Shut up,” Feuilly whispered back equally as quietly and underscored his point by pinching Bahorel just a tad too hard. 

His parents ate it up like chocolate. His mother did something he had never heard her do before, which was actually coo at their apparent sweet talking. This was a woman who had gotten into a fistfight with a guy competing with her for the purchase of a red bicycle Bahorel had wanted for his birthday. She asked more questions, about the wedding, about their relationship, some appropriate, some less so. Bahorel mostly let Feuilly do the talking, since he was turning out to be better at it. Yes, they'd been together for a while. No, they hadn't talked about kids yet. Yes, they were sure about not having a church wedding. Yes, they planned to wait until marriage to have sex.  
That last one made Feuilly break character. He had to pretend to kiss Bahorel to hide the laughter bubbling up. And by pretend to kiss, he meant kiss.   
Bahorel could feel Feuilly's grin against his lips, and felt himself reciprocating it, leaning into the kiss determined that if he couldn't tell convincing lies, he'd show them instead. Kissing Feuilly, biting his lip, licking over them in cheeky apology, doing it again just to show he had no remorse, was more fun than he'd imagined. It was also really hot. If they were really getting married, there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that he could have resisted banging Feuilly against every available surface by now. He could barely resist right now and his immediate family was very much standing in from him.  
“Uh, gross.”  
And the romance was gone. Bahorel pulled away to give his sister the finger. His mother geared up for another round of questioning and Bahorel decided not to try and dig himself any deeper.  
“Would love to stay and catch up,” Bahorel said. “But we really have a lot, uh, wedding planning and stuff to do.”  
He thought he could hear Feuilly say 'smooth' under his breath, but couldn't be sure. 

The excuse worked at least. His mother kept reiterating the usefulness of having experienced help in the planning process, for example a certain someone's mother, but Bahorel staved her off long enough for Feuilly to get together their things and head out.   
As Bahorel's fiancé he was subjected to the same goodbye rituals Bahorel was, and endured several minutes of hugs, kisses, and last-minute really important questions that almost caused Bahorel to claim he'd be wearing a dress at the wedding, stopped short only by Feuilly violently kicking him in the shin while his parents' backs were turned. 

Eventually they managed to get away, and for a while they headed home as they always did, walking the half block distance to the tube in comfortable silence like they had three times a week for a year and a half.   
Of course Feuilly had to ruin it.  
“Come up with an idea on how to get out of this yet?” he asked with a shit-eating grin. Bahorel groaned and shoved Feuilly towards a trash can that he unfortunately did not fall into. Instead he caught himself, pushed back against Bahorel, almost sending him flying into a store window. He always underestimated just how much strength Feuilly had hiding in that wiry little body of his. He also always underestimated how much it turned him on every time Feuilly showed it.  
“We'll just stage a huge breakup or something,” Bahorel said. “Flying china, shouting matches at three in the morning, the whole thing.”  
“Oh, you should cheat on me. With a really hot dude, so it's believable.”  
“Why do I have to be the cheater? You be the cheater.”  
“Are you kidding me? Your family would hate me, and I like them. They're nice people.”  
Bahorel threw a look at Feuilly, but it appeared he'd been serious. Because he couldn't let it be, he dashed forward and caught Feuilly by surprise in a headlock, feeling around his head for suspicious bumps.  
“Did you hit your head?”  
Feuilly laughed and cussed him out at the same time. It took another well-placed kick to make Bahorel let go, dancing backwards, hands up. Feuilly didn't rise to the bait.  
“No, you shithead. I'm serious.”  
“My family's a roving gang of lunatics. Love 'em to bits, but it's true.”  
“They're a lot better than my foster family,” Feuilly said, the tiniest frown where his smile had been. Bahorel stepped in with his trademark tact and charm.  
“Bro, starving alligators are better than your foster family.”  
Feuilly laughed as Bahorel knew he would, big, full belly barking laughter, head thrown back and the afternoon sun emphasising his freckles. Bahorel smiled, feeling he could have done a lot worse for a fake fiancé. Maybe, if he got together enough guts to finally ask, one day Feuilly would even be his real fiancé.  
“What?” Feuilly asked, having noticed Bahorel staring.  
He shook his head, waved it off.   
“Let's just pretend to plan this wedding for now and we'll figure out who cheats on whom later. We can't break it off right away, anyway, or they'll know something's up.”  
That was as good a reason as any and it got Feuilly to agree to keep this ruse up for at least a couple more days. 

By morning the next day the whole world knew of Bahorel's and Feuilly's engagement. Bahorel looked numbly down on the 317 texts he'd gotten over the night, most of them from Courfeyrac. From the incoherent warbling of his friends falling over themselves to try and convey through text how much they had not seen this coming, he gathered that somehow the news had gotten to Cosette. Cosette had told Éponine, who had told Grantaire, who had told Bossuet, who had shouted it out to everyone in earshot because he was easily surprised and not good at keeping secrets. He had a masstext already written saying in so many words that of course he and Feuilly weren't getting married and he was frankly questioning their friends' critical thinking abilities since they weren't even dating, when a thought formed. After yesterday he didn't trust his strokes of genius as much as he otherwise might have. He closed the mass text and instead addressed one to Feuilly specifically. 

_How high r the chances of our friends not acidentlly telling my parents we r not getting married if we tell them??_

Bahorel checked his watch. Feuilly was likely at work, so his textback could take a while. Resolving that if he for once in his life got up early in the morning he might as well be productive, Bahorel showered, dressed in something vaguely respectable and hit his favourite safe space while he waited for Feuilly to answer.

Valjean was already at the gym, teaching a bunch of six-year olds how to not knock themselves out while boxing. Bahorel watched them for a while, hardly able to believe that he'd ever been that small, or that bad at throwing a punch. Most people who met him assumed he sprang fully formed into the world, ready to kick ass. Some days Bahorel had a difficult time convincing himself it was not so.   
“Congratulations,” Valjean said after the lesson was over and Bahorel had gone through a light workout. “I didn't have a chance to say it yesterday, but I'm happy for you and Feuilly.”  
Bahorel gave him the side-eye.  
“Very funny. Take the mickey, will ya?”  
“I'm serious.” And to Bahorel's horror Valjean actually laid a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “I wish you'd told me you were together, of course. You know you can trust me with these things, don't you?”  
It dawned on Bahorel that either they were really good at lying or he and Feuilly sent out some serious boyfriend vibes when together.   
“You do realise that we're not actually getting married, right? I just said that to get my parents off my back about the gay-is-a-phase thing.”

A beat went past. Then the yelling started.  
“You _lied_ to your _parents_ about getting _married_?!”  
“You actually thought I was going to marry Feuilly?!”  
“You can't lie about that sort of thing!”  
“We're not even dating, for fucks sake!”  
“How do you think this is going to end?”  
“He's not even into me!”  
Valjean fell silent and Bahorel was out of breath. He realised too late that he should have said 'we're not into each other' rather than 'he is not into me', but the damage was done and Valjean had that fatherly look again. Bahorel avoided it by cursing and turning towards the punching back, taking out his frustrations on it rather than on someone undeserving.   
“You really dug yourself a hole there, didn't you?”  
Bahorel didn't grace that with an answer. He pummeled the punching back until Valjean got the message and left him alone. He gave him one last reassuring pat on the shoulder and that, much as he hated to admit it, sort of helped. 

By the time he was through with the bag, Feuilly had answered his text. If nothing else, at least he was in this with his best friend. If he had dug himself that hole, Feuilly had jumped in after him.   
_p low_. The text said. _dont want to lie to our friends :(_  
Bahorel didn't either, but he also didn't want his family finding out about his lie from people they barely knew and who wouldn't intend for them to know in the first place.  
 _me neither_  
Thinking for a while he added: _itll be a hilarious story tho_  
He got several smiley emojis back in return, which he took to mean that Feuilly was alright with extending the ruse a little. Emboldened by this, Bahorel sent out a mass text telling his friends that yes they were getting married, surprise, and the invites would come in the mail soon. He still didn't know if he should be flattered, insulted, or just plain confused that apparently everyone who knew them thought it was perfectly fine and realistic that he and Feuilly would be getting married to each other. All that done, there was one thing left to do.

“It's white paper, bro, what's the difference?”  
Feuilly looked at him with the exact same expression his second grade teacher had worn when Bahorel hadn't understood what the difference between a noun and a verb was. His hair was a mess, he had bags under his eyes that deserved their own brand name. And he still wore his work clothes, ugly shoes and coffee stained shirt, and Bahorel should not find him as attractive as he did.   
Instead of giving a verbal answer, Feuilly held out two pieces of white paper. Bahorel took them, weighed them in his hands, looked at them front to back, up and down.   
“I don't get it,” he said finally.  
Feuilly sighed, took the paper away from him and turned to the suspiciously friendly sales clerk.  
“Something simpler, please. It's a low key event, we don't want to set expectations too high.”  
“What's simpler than white paper?” Bahorel asked.   
Nobody paid attention to him.

Their little excursion into the world of wedding planning did get a lot more fun when it turned out they'd get to customise the text on the invitations. They had a twenty minute debate over the propriety of addressing all their potential guests as “Hey Fuckfaces”, turning into Bahorel trying to convince Feuilly that it was not worth blowing all his savings on a professional cartoonist drawing them as caricatures on the invites.   
“No one's going to believe it's us getting married if there's no swearwords in it.”  
Feuilly pinched his nose.  
“I can't believe I'm getting married to you,” he said. “Okay, compromise. I let you put Shit just got real as the header, and you let me draw dicks on my foster family's invites. And misspell their names any way I want.”  
Bahorel accepted that compromise, although he couldn't let it go without complaining a little bit.  
“I still don't get why you want to invite them.”  
“Because they're huge homophobes, and everyone we know is queer. It'll be the worst day of their fucking lives.”  
That conjured the mental image of siccing Jehan on Feuilly's foster family. Bahorel grinned.  
“Good point. Are we done with the invites?”  
Another oh-you-poor-idiot look. Bahorel would be insulted if they didn't look incredibly good on Feuilly.  
“Not even close. We still need to pick out the shape, size, font, and inserts. Sit down, we'll be here a while.”

Because the invitation had to look real, they had to settle on a venue and date. The venue was easily settled.  
“Valjean's house,” they said at the same time. The old man had a garden worth dying for and a kitchen Feuilly would kill for. They could cook their own food, saving on catering, and put one of their friends in charge of music. Of course it wouldn't come to that, they'd call the whole thing off long before then, but this was the kind of thing you started thinking about when planning a wedding, even a fake one.   
The date was easily settled as well, a month from now, and because neither of them could afford an open bar, or any bar, with Grantaire in attendance, it was BYOB. It surprised Bahorel how quickly they agreed on these things, how fast they came to compromises. They'd make a good couple, he thought. Perhaps that's what their friends had seen all along. 

That evening Bahorel was almost convinced to just go through with it. The clerk who had helped them with the invitations had inadvertently given them an idea when she talked about the difference between officiants and celebrants. A distinction Bahorel still didn't quite understand, mostly because he'd spent that part watching Feuilly practice his calligraphy after they'd decided they'd want their names on the invitations to be in their own handwriting. In either case, it turned out the wedding ceremony didn't have to be performed by a legal authority. If it came to it, and Feuilly had made him promise that he'd come clear to his parents before that, but if it came to it, they could just lie about having gotten married at the registrar's office and have one of their friends marry them. It was tempting to just let it run its course, see what would happen. But Feuilly, sitting on Bahorel's ratty couch and throwing insults at the referee on telly, made very clear that he wasn't going to marry Bahorel. Which made sense. Since they weren't even dating and all.  
Which, when he put it like that, had seemed like an asshole-ish move to do to their friends, further reinforced when Grantaire showed up at his door, slightly disheveled.

“It doesn't make sense,” was the first thing he said and Bahorel was parts relieved, part worried about one of their friends having figured out his sham engagement. “You're getting married to Feuilly and I'm not the best man? What the fuck, man?”  
Oh.   
“Come in,” Bahorel said and stepped back to allow Grantaire to enter. He made a beeline for the fridge, and brought two beers to the living room, not waiting for Bahorel to follow or give him permission to raid his fridge. By the time Bahorel had caught up, he was well into his bottle and joined Feuilly in cussing out the referee who'd been apparently lobotomised by a drunk gorilla with anger management issues.  
“It was supposed to be a lowkey affair,” Bahorel said. “You know, nothing big.”  
Nothing at all, as of yesterday morning.  
“You still need a best man,” Grantaire argued. “Cake, rings, best man, groom, priest. In that order. Back me up on this, Feuilly.”   
“There's not going to be cake,” Feuilly said without looking away from the TV.  
Grantaire made a noise of actual emotional pain. He turned, shot Bahorel a look of pure disapproval.   
“What kind of wedding is this? Next you'll tell me there's not going to be booze.”  
“BYOB.”  
Grantaire looked close to tears. Bahorel decided he'd tortured him enough. Besides, he had had the exact conversation he needed for this with Feuilly six months ago at an unrelated event.  
“The reason I didn't ask you yet is because Feuilly and I both wanted you and we couldn't agree who got you as best man.”  
It had been the right thing to say. Feuilly made a vague noise of assent in the background. Grantaire's frown softened into a smug grin and if Bahorel didn't know him better, he'd actually have believed it was real. But he did know Grantaire and drew him into a one-armed hug.  
“Be my best man?”  
The engagement was fake, the wedding would never happen, but asking Grantaire to be his best man was the most honest thing Bahorel had done in his life. Once this was all over they'd have a laugh about it, and if and when the day came that he actually got married, he'd ask again.  
When Grantaire said yes they both pretended Grantaire's eyes remained dry.   
He did bring up another issue though.  
“Have you gotten the rings yet?”  
This was getting more complicated by the minute.

Feuilly, who hadn't paid much attention to yesterday's proceedings on account of his team losing horribly, rolled his eyes over the revelation they'd have to buy rings as well. He dragged Bahorel into a cheap fashion jewellery shop, where high-class meant 'not made out of painted plastic'.   
“Let's not spend more than we have to on this thing,” he said. “Less than twenty quid for both, and if you pick one with a rock on it, I'm ending this right here and now.”  
Naturally, the first thing Bahorel presented to Feuilly was a ring with a fake sapphire as big as his thumb.   
“Feufeu, my dear, my sweet honeysuckle, my boo bear-”  
Feuilly grabbed a frilly hairband with extra bows out of one of the grab bins and shoved it onto Bahorel's head.  
“That's the shithead crown,” he said in a deadpan that almost sent Bahorel to the floor laughing.   
“This won't shame me into behaving myself, you know?”  
“Joke's on me for thinking you have any shame.”  
“Exactly.”

But, because they were both exactly as bad, they made a competition out of picking the worst rings they could find. Bahorel went into the lead with a tacky American class ring with an eagle and a lot of gold on it, something that not even Feuilly's choice of a ring with a spider encased in amber could beat. But, just when Bahorel was secure enough in his victory to call it, Feuilly made an “Ah-ha!” sound and grabbed from the display case-  
“A human tooth?”  
They both marvelled at the creation, a fake wisdom tooth, encased in something that was probably at least metal. It was so resoundingly ugly that Bahorel could not have resisted the urge to buy it if he'd been held at gunpoint.  
“We're getting this one.”  
“No way!”  
But Bahorel would not be budged and Feuilly knew a losing battle when he saw one. He needled him long enough that by the time Feuilly gave in, he didn't have the strength of will left to argue when Bahorel dragged him into the kids' section.  
“Bro, this is the only place we'll find one that fits you.”  
Feuilly knocked the shithead crown off his head.

They left the shop with the shithead crown, the tooth-ring, and a silver-ish creation with a pink rose clearly designed for girls aged 3 to 7 for Feuilly, which much to his chagrin fit him perfectly. Bahorel had just come up with the perfect joke about that when he spotted his sister with her friends coming up towards them.  
“Great. Quick, while they're looking,”  
Feuilly didn't have a chance to object, or even question this turn of events, before Bahorel grabbed him by the collar and pulled him in, kissing his neck like they were in the middle of a makeout session. Just for show, and because he knew it would annoy his sister, he pushed his hands into Feuilly's back pockets and squeezed his ass. His sister had seen him and started complaining to her friends about her older brother constantly making out with his boyfriend in front of her. He almost missed it over Feuilly's soft gasp, hot breath against his ear, Feuilly's hands curling into his shirt. As a general move it had probably been too forward for the fact that they were in the middle of a shopping mall and not, in fact, actually dating. But it had served the desired effect, his sister exaggeratedly rolling her eyes while passing him, and flipping him off when Bahorel grinned and, pointing at Feuilly over his back, made a blowjob gesture. She hurried off, her friends giggling and finding the whole thing incredibly funny, and Bahorel drew back.  
Feuilly was flushed red to the tips of his ears and he kept looking at Bahorel's lips as if he expected them to kiss now.  
“What brought this on?” he said, voice strangely husky. It went straight to Bahorel's dick, which was why he put some distance between them.   
“My sis just walked past. Figured we'd give her a little show. To sell it, right?”  
Bahorel had never thought that in this thing they were doing together, he could take things too far. But Feuilly's eyes had stopped being bright and glassy and had turned hard instead.  
“Right,” Feuilly said. He looked down at them, then up again, swallowing. “I can't ... we can't keep doing this. Either we stage that breakup or you'll tell your parents the truth, but this needs to stop. And I have to talk to you. About something important. When this is over.”  
Bahorel didn't know what to say. He wanted to keep this going, find some excuse to kiss Feuilly again, pretend for a while longer that his crush liked him too. But this wasn't something he got to argue about. If Feuilly wanted to stop, he'd stop.  
“Okay,” he said and congratulated himself on sounding almost human. “I'll tell my parents ... something, that we broke up. And then we'll tell our friends the truth. It'll be a funny story.”  
“Funny. Right. Yeah, okay.”

They parted in awkward silence, Feuilly off to his afternoon shift, Bahorel to wander aimlessly around the mall. He stopped in front of two different jewellers and couldn't even convince himself that it was coincidence. The rings on display there were not tacky joke items. They were simple, elegant things of gold, and platinum, and silver, some with sample inscriptions for people who really were in love with each other. Not for dumbasses like him who roped their best friends into a lie he himself had started, and then crossed every line in the book maintaining it.  
He stood in front of the jeweller's window so long that by the time he looked up the mall had emptied markedly. He had to tell his parents that he and Feuilly had broken up. Tomorrow, he resolved. Tonight he'd drink himself stupid.

Bahorel did drink himself stupid. Stupid enough to pick up a stranger in a bar and bring him home. Stupid enough to not answer Feuilly's texts. And when the next morning the doorbell rang he must have still some stupid left in his system because he didn't even check who it was before he opened the door.   
“Hey, you didn't answer my texts and I was worried, are you – who is that?”  
Bahorel was caught between the proverbial rock and the hard place, with the rock being the guy he fucked last night in a drunken heartbroken stupor, and the hard place being Feuilly's expression, betraying nothing except ice cold fury.  
“Just some guy,” Bahorel mumbled, telling himself he had nothing to feel bad about but shrinking back from Feuilly's eyes piercing through him nonetheless.  
“I should leave,” said the guy, pointing at his shoes by the door.  
“Yes, leave. Fuck off.”  
Feuilly gestured towards the door, fury simmering below the surface until the guy had passed him.  
“You just fucked a random stranger? What the fuck, what if someone saw you? Did you tell your parents about the engagement yet?”  
They both ignored the stranger's little 'oh shit' going down the stairs but Feuilly did step further into the flat to close the door. This did not make Bahorel feel better. He did feel very much like a live rat in a snake enclosure.   
“No ...”  
“Then what the fuck were you thinking?”  
Bahorel fought back, furious at himself but also at Feuilly who didn't make any sense at all. He used the only tactic he had to gain ground against Feuilly which was get all up in his face.   
“I thought this was what you wanted!”  
Feuilly, who barely reached Bahorel's shoulder on a good day, didn't budge an inch.  
“You think I wanted you to pick up some random asshole? Wh-”  
“You wanted me to break this whole thing off. It's good if someone saw me with that guy, because that means it's over, just like you wan-”  
“I didn't want you to sleep around while you date me you colossal-”  
“ _Pretend_ date you, okay? None of this was real, don't-”  
“It was real to me!”

Somewhere in the distance a car alarm went off. The baby from next door cried. In Bahorel's flat there was nothing but stunned silence. Feuilly clamped his hands over his mouth, eyes wide, face white as all blood drained out of it. Bahorel felt like an incorporeal voice in his own body, rattling around somewhere in his head, trying to find the button that would make the world make sense again.   
“I didn't ...” Feuilly whispered, barely audible through his hands and what Bahorel was rapidly beginning to realise was him trying not to cry. Time stretched on like a rubber band, growing more and more taut with every second that didn't pass. Then it snapped.

Feuilly turned on his heels, was at the door by the time Bahorel realised what he was about to do, and that gave him back control over his legs. He sprinted after Feuilly, reached out just as he got to the top of the stairs, grabbed a fistful of Feuilly's jacket and _pulled_. 

Feuilly shouted, they both fell backwards through the door, he landing hard on his back, Feuilly on top of him, in the process of cursing out every single atom in his body. He tried to find his footing, get to his feet. Bahorel didn't let him. He pulled Feuilly down and kissed him, swallowed his curses and his tears alike, one hand finding a place between his shoulderblades where they fit perfectly. The other snuck back into Feuilly's backpocket, where it had been yesterday where Bahorel had crossed the same line he was crossing now. Except this time he knew what he was doing.   
“It was real to me, too,” he said when they broke for air. Feuilly made a broken-off sound of disbelief, half sob and half question, and Bahorel answered both by kissing him again, and then again just because he could.   
“You can't keep doing this to me,” he said against Bahorel's lips. “I swear to god, if this is another lie-”  
“I'm in love with you,” Bahorel said simply and Feuilly sealed their lips with another kiss. They kept kissing like that for what felt like hours, neither inclined to get up. Bahorel discovered when he kissed Feuilly's eyelids, one after the other, he would draw in a shuddering breath and scratch down Bahorel's arms in a way that made his skin stand up in goosebumps. When Feuilly bent down to pepper kisses down Bahorel's throat, moving down while grinning cheekily, Bahorel had to mentally list types of pasta to keep from getting hard.   
It did not end in a blowjob, but with Feuilly lying down on Bahorel's chest, ear pressed against his ribcage, fingers drumming the rhythm of Bahorel's heartbeat.   
“I guess this is going to be a really funny get-together story now,” Bahorel said deceptively casual. Feuilly saw through him right away.  
“If you don't call yourself my boyfriend, I'm calling the cops,” he said solemnly to Bahorel's raucuous laughter.   
Still chuckling he placed a kiss on the top of Feuilly's head and said: “You know what would be _really_ funny?”

On the seventeenth of March, at two in the afternoon, Feuilly and Bahorel got married. They had gotten proper rings, put Courfeyrac in charge of music and asked Enjolras to be their celebrant. They had told him to write a speech and considering that he'd had only a two weeks notice, it was everything it needed to be. Bahorel's extended family filled out one side of the aisle, and all their friends, as well as Feuilly's foster parents who looked like they'd gotten lemons to suck, on the other. Everyone had gotten dressed up in their best clothes, watching the proceedings with varying amounts of interest. Bahorel was pretty sure his sister was on her phone.  
“It is this love,” Enjolras said, reading from a speech he most certainly had kept working on until the last minute. “That overcomes all- oh for heaven's sake, are you serious?”  
Bahorel looked at Enjolras, then at Feuilly, then back at Enjolras.  
“What?”  
“This is a bit far to go for a prank, don't you think?”  
Bahorel was at a loss for words, but once again Feuilly came to his aid.  
“This isn't a prank, Enjolras. We got the marriage certificate at the registrar's this morning.”  
Bahorel thought that this was what a mindfuck looked like on another person. He was almost convinced Enjolras' head was about to pop right off his collar. Then, from the crowd a voice cried: “Wait, you guys are getting married for real?”

And then all hell broke loose. Their friends expressing their disbelief over the proceedings while Bahorel's family wanted to know why on earth their friends would be thinking this was all a prank. Grantaire at Bahorel's side stared numbly down at the rings he'd been carrying.  
“Is this real gold?”  
“Yes,” said Bahorel. And then: “You guys knew it was fake all along?”  
“Of course we did, what do you take us for? Wait, so it is fake?”  
“It was fake,” Feuilly said. “But we figured, we'd already sent out the invites. Why not go through with it?”  
“Why not,” echoed Enjolras and then threw his hands up. “Alright, I guess you're married now. Why the fuck not?”  
They exchanged rings, taking them from a still shell-shocked Grantaire while everyone clamoured for their attention.  
And Bahorel, newly married, dipped and kissed Feuilly in front of all their friends and family.


End file.
